The challenge comes from the way the curriculum is handed down and, subsequently, the way teachers think they ought to teach. The problems arise in math class, not from explicit teaching, but from an inadvertent sense that is fostered through the idea of math and all that it entails. The most notable schism between the math class and the real world comes from the way we test and assess students.

The math test seems to have been around since the inception of school. Let me stop for a second and clarify one thing before I continue…It’s not the math test’s fault. There is nothing wrong with testing students in math. The problem is how our assessments are used to create a stigma about math as well as espouse a fixed mindset in our children.

The constant use of the math test creates immediate self-perceptions within the student. The use and importance of the test inadvertently creates a paradigm where students judge their academic standing based on a score. Teachers, despite their best interests, judge the students based on their test grades as well. It becomes a culture of fixed mentalities. No space for the idea that people’s intellectual abilities can grow, change, and develop. The math test becomes the ultimate Super Bowl, and you either win or lose. Either way, the season is over after the game.

Trouble is, this mentality doesn’t even stand in sports. Yes, there is a winner and loser, but there is always a next game or season. When a child first learns how to shoot a jump shot, he may miss more than he makes it. He may make 3 out of 20 when he first starts and maybe improve to 7 out of 20 after a few weeks. Is he consistently failing? Has he failed two straight “tests”? No, see in sports, like most other walks of life, he is practicing! What school calls failure, the real world calls practice.

Then, it becomes a challenge to shift the mentality regarding tests like the ones a student may receive a 7 out of 20 on in math class. When a kid shoots 7 out of 20 in a basketball game, he doesn’t feel anywhere close to as defeated as a kid who gets a test back that he scored 7 out of 20 on. Reason why? Because the mentality in those two environments is completely opposite. To save words, the basketball game epitomizes the idea of a growth mindset; the math class represents a fixed mentality.

What’s more, that kid who shot 7 out of 20 in the game still scored 14 points! He still did something positive, very positive actually. With traditional assessment, the only thing that kid in math class scored was an F on the top of his paper. Failure versus practice. Closed self-perceptions versus opportunities to see yourself capable of growing.

No answers here on how we change the culture. But it is evident that we do need to encourage more students to see themselves as proficient in mathematics. Perhaps one way to do this stems from the way we teach and test: more coaching the practices and less refereeing the final game may be a solution.

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The post Testing Students: It’s Practice, Not Failure appeared first on Matthew R. Morris.

Since it’s Super Sunday, I thought I’d share a few of my thoughts on football, race, and life. And especially my thoughts on this idea of the American Dream myth. Last year at this time, the Richard Sherman story was one of the most heralded narratives in the mass media. Here we have this kid from Compton who ended up at Stanford and is now living out his childhood dream. Sounds great right? We naively look at this and tell our youth, “see all you have to do is work hard and you will get what you want.” Not so fast. This story is not about how hard work is the key to success for all. This story, if you boil it down, is about the ways in which Black men are allowed to succeed in a system of perpetual hegemonic rule. If you do work hard in sports you will be afforded the opportunities to succeed as a Black male. This hard work pays off ethic is not true for all endeavors. What about those Black males who are not athletically inclined nor particularly interested in sports? Does this same hard-working “American Dream” hold true? Unfortunately, I would say no.

The Richard Sherman story is a great one indeed but we also have to keep in mind how some of these narratives extend our ideas of popular knowledge. The Black male as “the brute” is one that has detrimental psychological consequences on many of our Black youth. Pushing Black males into sports because they are “naturals” does nothing for the majority of Black boys. On the contrary, it simply maintains the status quo by implying that if you are Black and a male you should pursue sports, because if you work hard there you will be rewarded. That same meritocratic paradigm does not lend itself to other avenues of life. I rarely see Black boys being pushed into academics like science, math, politics and so on. This Sherman story lends itself to the theme that “to succeed in the United States, an individual only has to work hard” and also that “one can realize their dreams in the United States if they are willing to work hard and pull themselves up by the bootstrap”. While this might be true for some people, it is not true for all. For Black people, especially Black males, there are only marginalized contexts in which this is true – sports being one of them. So while you continuously hear these broadcasters and journalist talk about how Richard Sherman is such a great example for kids, keep in mind how closed the context really is and what these people are really saying (or not saying) about Black masculinity and culture.

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The post The Super Bowl, Richard Sherman and perpetuating the myth of “The American Dream” appeared first on Matthew R. Morris.